I went into this past weekend fully intending to see Red One, that new movie in which The Rock, Chris Evans and a polar bear have to rescue a kidnapped (and completely jacked) Santa Claus.
But then I realized that, ultimately, that movie is probably as critic proof as it possibly gets. You don’t need me to tell you whether it’s worth your time because if you’ve seen the trailer you absolutely already know if it’s for you or not. I’m sure it’s fun and probably at least a little entertaining, but it’s doubtful there’s much to really decode from it.
So instead, I figure we’ll all gain something more from a look at three of the high-profile independent movies that are in a lot of early discussions about the upcoming Oscars.
This is the time of the year when films being released are being targeted to audiences as possible awards contenders—don’t-miss movies for people who care about those sorts of things. The movie that seems to have the year’s most Oscar buzz so far is Anora, the new film from Sean Baker, the indie auteur behind stone classics like Tangerine and The Florida Project.
Baker is a hell of a filmmaker whose output so far has almost exclusively unpacked different aspects of sex work from the viewpoint of lower/middle class societal exiles. Anora is easily Baker’s most “mainstream” film so far, which is saying a lot since it’s still a 139-minute romantic dramedy that flits between gritty drama, screwball comedy and crime thriller with ease.
Anora won the Palme d’Or, (basically Best in Show) at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, joining the ranks of films like Parasite, Paris, Texas, Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction and Apocalypse Now in the prestigious club of cinematic greats.
While on the surface, Anora is basically a somewhat more realistic take on Pretty Woman, the film looks at the toll that life takes on a young woman who meets a rich young Russian that wants to pay her lots of money for her company. What seems glamorous and exciting at first begins to curdle in ways we don’t even recognize at first, and while the film is very fun and fast paced, it’s also exhausting on an almost spiritual level while still never succumbing to nihilistic musing on the state of the world.
Is Anora as strong as some of the other Palme d’Or winners? I have no idea until I’m able to watch it a few more times and really sit with it. But as it stands, Anora is ridiculously entertaining at its worst and deeply moving at its best, featuring an astonishing performance from Mikey Madison as Anora. It’s not my favorite film of the year so far, but it belongs in the top 10 for sure.
Another movie sitting pretty with awards buzz is We Live in Time, a romantic drama featuring two full-blown movie-star performances from Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield as a couple that we follow over the course of a decade. Pugh and Garfield have such easy-going chemistry that feels so lived in and effortless that even though the story is something we’ve seen a million times before, they’re so impossibly charming to watch that we’re swept along anyway.
With these two central performances and surprisingly deft and subtle direction from John Crowley, We Live in Time feels like an old-fashioned melodrama in both positive (stirring, moving) and negative (cheesy, manipulative) ways. Aside from the non-chronological storytelling, it’s such a conventional film that it’s hard to believe it was released by A24. Still, it feels like the kind of film we don’t get much of anymore, so it’s easy to be romanced by the whole thing.
Also sharing some of the buzz is the new film from English auteur Andrea Arnold, Bird, starring newly minted movie star Barry Keoghan (he left Gladiator II to make this), just as grimy here as he was in Saltburn, but with 100 percent less bathtubs. Bird follows 12-year-old Bailey (played by the natural and moving Nykiya Adams), who lives in a falling-to-pieces slum in Kent, surrounded by adults who are much less mature than she is. With her drug-dealing father (played by the phenomenal Keoghan) bringing endless chaos to her life, Bailey exists between a state of gritty immediacy and magical realism that keeps Bird feeling like a work of pure originality.
Arnold films most of Bird handheld, so the intensity of the filmmaking is belayed by Bailey still accessing her childhood wonder, creating multiple moments that feel somehow spontaneous and perfectly, formally executed. It’s truly bravura filmmaking from the fearless Arnold, who expands the breadth of her filmmaking language here to the point of making me wonder if there’s anything she can’t do. The film itself is so tonally all over the place that it initially felt jarring, but had completely won me over by the end. Bird is strange and singular in a way only Arnold could have achieved.
I’m not sure if any of these three movies will win top prizes at the Oscars (although Anora has the best chance). Regardless, they are three serious works that deserve your consideration…even without the polar bears.
Report Card
Anora: A-
We Live in Time: B
Bird: B+
